ABSTRACT
The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act of 2011 made significant changes to the U.S. patenting system and was touted as a way to improve the patenting process. Before its implementation, some researchers predicted that it would lead to an increase in patenting, while others feared that it would have a dampening effect. There was a dramatic decrease in the number of new medical technology patents in the U.S. after the Act went into effect. We use data on R&D spending and market share to analyze the change in the patenting behavior of U.S. medical technology firms. We find that the decrease in patenting was not associated with corresponding decreases in R&D spending. Our results suggest that medical technology firms continued to invest in innovative efforts but either did not pursue patents for these innovations as aggressively as before or focused on patenting more complex and costly innovations.
Keywords
Patents, Innovation, Medical.